The present invention relates to industrial processes where work in progress (work-pieces) is transported from station to station and conveyors are used, particularly where the work-pieces are of high value and/or of a fragile nature. Typically, a batch of work-pieces (the item being operated on at the various stations) are loaded in a carrier and conveyed to and from each station in turn. The carrier types range from open or closed boxes to hermetically sealed pods.
One continuing problem for many factories is that work-pieces needing identical operations often come in significantly different sizes. One prior art solution is to make different size carriers for the different size work-pieces. For example, the hard disk media used in computer disk storage systems come in a wide variety of sizes. The carriers also come in a wide variety of sizes to comply with the media sizes while transporting the media through the manufacturing process. Of necessity the conveyor system must be capable of handling all the different sized carriers and with different drive densities. For example, there are 65 mm, 95 mm, and 130 mm diameter disks needing three different sized carriers. If these different sized disks were to be transported concurrently, three conveyor systems in parallel are used. Such parallel systems entail high costs and wasted space. Alternatively, special conveyors might be specially designed (at high cost) to carry a number of different sized disks, but such systems are not feasible for carrying all different sizes at the same time.
Specific manufactured products of concern include, at least: semiconductor wafers (with and without applied integrated circuit topologies); optical lenses; electromagnetic and electronic arrays; computer disk data storage; flat panel displays; and pharmaceuticals in liquid (bottled or encapsulated) and sold forms.